With the fastest growing unemployment rate among 18–24 year olds, are ministers right to advise us to settle for our summer jobs to prevent us from “vegetating”? Fears that graduates are falling off the employment scale have sparked fresh controversy over how employable Britain’s graduates really are. Sarah Spikesley asks: is any work really better than no work at all, even if it means wielding a frying pan or a spatula instead of The Collected Works of Shakespeare?